For the Advocacy of Public Education

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One of my favorite parts of the TV version of American Gods was the ancient Egyptian deity Anubis weighing the heart of the woman who just died to determine if her soul would enter paradise or go through a door to the demon soul eater Ammit for a fate worse than death. As the ancient myth goes, if one’s heart was lighter than the feather of truth, one lived a good life whose good deeds outweighed one’s sins. It was Anubis’ job to weigh your heart against Ma’at, the Ostrich feather of truth. If your heart was lighter than the feather eternal paradise awaited.

I bring up this myth to weigh the political events of yesterday. Yesterday, the GOP endorsed Moore for Senator of Alabama. There are in life some things that are greater than cut throat partisan politics. Human decency should always “trump” one’s selfish desires. Therefore, If the heart of the RNC went before Anubis, its weight would break the scale.

But let us go beyond myth to the hearts of many who profess evangelical Christianity in Alabama. Now, remember, I just said “many” and not “all” because there are good and bad among all members of the human race. However, If you are supposedly an evangelical Christian and support Moore, you are nothing but a hypocrite in my eyes, Pedaphilia goes beyond sin, It is a mental illness that is near impossible to cure. My psychology professor of 40 years ago said that child molesters should be locked up and the key to the cell should be thrown into the river. Any believer in the literal truth of the Bible who votes for him should take their Bible and throw it in the trash because the words you believe in is less than worthless. On the other hand, I know many agnostics and atheists that have more moral and ethical integrity than this piece of filth running for the Senate. And by the way, peer reviewed research shows that most pedaphiles are heterosexuals and not LGBQT.

While most atheists, agnostics and LGBQT people with good hearts and spend their lives doing good deeds would pass Anubis’ feather test, Mr. Moore’s heart would not only break the scale but also the pedestal in which the scale stands. As for Mr. Trump, his heart would cause an earthquake as it fell. with a smiling Ammit waiting to devour his soul just beyond the gate. And to use another literary analogy relevant to this holiday season, the weighted chains that the RNC, Moore, the GOP Congress and Trump will carry in death make the chains of Jacob Marley’s ghost look like trinkets.

I am not going to start with any platitudes. Instead, I am going to start with what I have learned as an educator and a person in the 2016.

Lesson 1: People are often not who you think they are.

I belong to a fraternal organization that was founded with the ideal of bringing people together. I will not name the order, but it was founded in the 19th century and was chartered by an Act of Congress to heal the wounds of the Civil War. It has a non-sectarian history, although it did discriminate racially up to the mid 20th century and it is supposed to be dedicated to benevolence, friendship and charity. I was given the honor of a high position in this organization last year. However, this year I discovered that the supposed friends I had in my lodge were no friends when someone revealed to them my very public personal and political beliefs. These people ended up saying horrible things about me and my family because one, I am critical of the future president, two, I believe in protest and civil disobedience and three, my son is a married gay man with a family. When I was supposed to be honored for the work I was doing for the organization, many members of my own lodge planned to boycott me. They demanded that I apologize for something I wrote on Facebook. I basically wrote that if the government passes an unconstitutional or unjust law, people have the right to protest that law and engage in civil disobedience. At first, I have to admit, I succumbed to their act of bullying based on the advice of some good friends who wanted peace. Without really apologizing, as several brothers really wanted me to do, I clarified certain ideas to make my statements more palpable to my supposed brothers. Then I thought about it. At first, I thought about leaving my lodge, but then changed my mind. Why should the victim leave? Instead, I became angry that I betrayed my ideals because of threats and bullying. As an educator, I have been trained to teach students how to deal with bullying effectively and I didn’t. As a Doctor Who fan, I always think of this quote, “Never give up, never give in.” Therefore, after my lodge had a holiday party in which several brothers chose to be disrespectful by trying to ostracize and ignore me, I decided to write them a letter telling them I will not stand for bullying. In addition, I told them who I was, what I believed in, and that I expected a private apology before I would make a motion for a public apology at the next meeting I planned to attend. The perpetrators have so far ignored what I wrote. But why should I be surprised. They voted for their role model.

Lesson 2: Only people who truly love you are your real friends.

On Facebook, I had 25 people who unfriended me because of my beliefs and opinions. One was even a cousin. When someone denounces me completely out of ignorance, I will call him or her out. Here are some things said. “The fact you support Bernie Sanders proves you are a godless communist and hell fire awaits.” When I tried to explain the difference between totalitarian communism and democratic socialism as well as certain religious perspectives on my part, such as the fact that in the name of religion countless millions have died, I was blocked. I also was blocked when I stated, “Any law passed banning people from burning the flag is unconstitutional” I was told I should be shot for treason and that I am wrong, it is illegal to burn the flag. When I told one person to look up the Supreme Court ruling Johnson v. Texas in which none other than Antonin Scalia stated that burning the flag is symbolic speech and has to be protected by the first amendment, I was cursed, denounced and blocked. Again, what should one expect when people mimic their new role model who will occupy the White House on January 20. And this leads to . . .

Lesson 3: Many believe in free speech only for themselves.

Many who are angry that I will not support the new president have called me a hypocritical liberal. They claimed that liberalism supposedly allows free speech for everyone to air their ideas equally. Therefore, why do we constantly denounce the words of Trump and his supporters. I love it when they set up straw men and state what liberalism supposedly believes in. Guess what? Free speech is not absolute. Micheal Shermer and Alex Grobman in their writings about issues surrounding Holocaust deniers discuss extensively free speech issues surrounding people and institutions who claim that the murder of 6 million Jews did not happen. Because the background and motivation of many Holocaust deniers are often anti-Semitic and can be labeled hate speech, the purpose of their proven lies are meant to cause harm and should not be completely protected once their ideas lead to criminal action. The same can be said of the words of the future president. His words have lead to the criminal endangerment of many people in American society. Therefore, there is nothing wrong in prescribing his words within the confines of a free press. What I mean by this is that he should be allowed to say what he wants, but there should be equal time given to the public refutation of his ideas. This is where the mainstream press has failed if you apply Shermer and Grobman’s concept of free speech to the president-elect. With every word he said, there should have been given equal time to those who would use reason to refute his ideas with facts. Our present concept of free speech comes from the Enlightenment, and according to many enlightenment philosophers, rational reasoning “trumps” the idea of free speech. Our supposed mainstream free press really did not give equal time to a public refuting to the ideas expressed by Trump and his cohorts using reasoning and evidence in the last year. I did not see any front page articles or 10 minutes of airtime on CNN showing that statistics disprove that most illegal aliens were rapists and murderers. I did not see mainstream articles describing that if he appoints to the Supreme Court several people who plan to overturn marriage equality, it will be overturned no matter what Trump says. And this leads to . . .

Lesson 4: Freedom does not mean freedom to express hate within the greater society.

Many Trump supporters talked to me about hating political correctness and felt proud in making myriads of racist comments against Obama. Interestingly, if they really believed that people were punished for not being politically correct, how come they were able to curse Obama without consequence? And yet, a person screamed at me how Obama forced people to serve and bake cakes for gay weddings against their religion while musical entertainers are refusing to play at the inaugural without consequence. First off, Obama cannot force anyone to do anything, but the laws of the United States does. These people do not understand that a business is only allowed to exist through state incorporation laws and once incorporated, the business becomes a public accommodation and thus cannot discriminate. On the other hand, an entertainer is a private citizen and is an individual who has a right to entertain or not entertain whenever or whoever they want. In terms of your own domicile or house, one is free not to allow someone who is black, blue, gay, green, or Klingon inside. Inside your house, with people of like mind, you can scream every racial epitaph you want. If you have a totally private school and take zero money from the government, unless a state prescribes some minimum curriculum requirements, you can teach that Fred Flintstone and Dino really existed or that the Jewish people whose calendar states it is the 5777 existed before some supreme entity created the world 5500 years ago according to someone on Trump’s transition team. A totally private school even has the right to ban a male student who wears a yellow poker dotted shirt if it wants. But once you take a penny of my money, I, through my government, have the right to call you out. And if we reach the point where the government refuses to obey its own laws, people have the right to go to the court and get what is called a Writ of Mandamus, which is an order forcing the government to do what it is supposed to do. What does this all mean? You do not have the freedom to publicly hate or discriminate because of anti-discrimination laws and the fact that hate almost always lead to violence. And present hate crime statistics against Muslims proves this out. On the other hand, I have the freedom to call out your hate and use whatever legal constitutional measures to stop you. As the 18th century Enlightenment philosophers basically said, your liberty cannot infringe on my liberty. Therefore, government exists, through both our consent, to be a mediator so that we can reach some type of accommodation so that we can both exist peacefully within a given society.

My one true wish is for the New Year is this. These lessons should be understood and respected by those who have different ideas. Why? Simple. Millions of Americans live our daily lives by lessons such as these. And to disregard these lessons, puts this approximately 240 year experiment in freedom and justice in grave danger in the year to come. I hope you are listening Mr. Trump.

The charter movement may have had one great success and that is the election of Donald Trump. His election is probably due to the balkanization of American culture through the charterization and privatization of a great chunk of our educational system over the last twenty years. The result has been the dilution of common values and beliefs that public education imbued in most Americans. Our common culture has been fragmented to the point that large groups of Americans no longer have common values—socially, economically and politically.

It is my contention that it was not only the educational level, but also the type of education people had played a large part in this election. In an analysis of several polls, the average Trump voter has an income of about $70,000. So there goes the idea that it was the alienated working class that put Trump into office because of their loss of good factory jobs. Instead, there were two other key factors. First, the lack of diversity within the community that voted for him, i.e., mostly white and second, the education level of the Trump voter. It is my opinion, there must be an analysis of the type of education many of the Trump voters either have or support. This goes way beyond whether key voting blocks were college educated or not. It is my feeling that the type of education one acquired played a critical role in the vote. If you look at the mostly white communities that voted for Trump in states like Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, I would bet there is a large presence of Charter or nonpublic religious schools.

In March 2013, in this blog, I wrote in this blog an article “Education and Class Warfare.” Little did I realize that I was predicting what was to come. I wrote, “Horace Mann, Thomas Jefferson, John Dewey and others had a very simple view of public education. To these men, public education in America would be the great equalizer. It would create a common American culture and an educated citizenry that would make decisions that would benefit the whole nation.” With an educated citizenry and common political culture, it was felt people would make informed decisions as to whom to elect. People would learn to differentiate between emotional rhetoric and sound policy decisions.

Unfortunately, the charter and voucher movements over these years have created schools where there is a lack of oversight as to what is being taught. One cannot create a common culture when one is isolated and does not interact with others who are different. How many charters and fundamentalist religious schools in rural areas of Michigan teach about the diversity of different people that make up this nation? How many have anti-bullying programs or teach tolerance toward students who are LBGQT? Instead, we have not only charters, but also sectarian schools run by people with certain religious notions teaching that the earth is 6000 years old, that it does not matter that we will deplete the environment because none of this will matter when the rapture comes, and that a good portion of the population is hell-bent because of their lifestyles. Even if one does not teach such religious notions, the segregated nature of many of these schools, in the end, lead to the same result—intolerance toward others.

In addition, many charters focus so much on the core skills that social studies and civics barely exist. When your focus is on passing an ELA test, one does not learn how to interpret and analyze critically different types of writing. One should be taught to differentiate between propaganda and objectively-based arguments. In addition, when these schools teach social studies, there is no standard curriculum that makes sure students learn to analyze both sides of an argument. For example, we all know that the Koch brothers are trying to create schools that teach a one sided, free market, but really crony capitalistic, economic view of the world. The good teaching of social studies involves students learning both sides of a historical issue and then debate as well as discuss the different points of view. I remember one of my social studies teachers, Mr. Lepler out of John Bowne High School. During each lesson he gave us a handout describing both sides of every issue and we debated the pros and cons of each argument. He would never tell us his opinion and we could not get him to tell us about his politics. Years later, when I became a teacher, I met him at a conference in my old high school. I asked him whether he was a liberal or conservative. His answer was that he was neither—he was a pragmatist. He based all political decisions on two factors—ethics and reason, not emotion.

The plan of future Education Secretary DeVos is to institutionalize nationally a fragmented educational system where millions will lack an enriched education in unregulated charter schools and private religious schools paid for through vouchers. She surely is not basing her decisions are any type of reason. If you described to her every study in the last few years showing that overall, charters are no better than public schools and those that lack regulation are often worse, she is one who would disregard all this research because her plans are ideologically based. She sees nothing wrong with teaching religious concepts in publicly funded charters and holds that public schools are nothing less than a dead end. I do feel she does understand one thing. It is that history shows that when one controls the education of a society, one ends up controlling that society. The people now coming into power want charters to create a less educated citizenry. They want to defund public education so that fewer schools will be able to teach the type of skills where diversity is accepted and people learn to think for themselves. Instead, DeVos and her supporters want schools that will teach students to be docile, submissive and accept the whatever the government says. All of this is the hall mark of an authoritarian society. The people who will now run the Department of Education may talk about school choice, but they want anything but. It is no choice when one takes away limited resources public education and give it to unregulated private entities. It is not choice when the government favors a private system over a pubic system while, at the same time, enact policies meant to destroy the nation’s community-based schools that are truly accountable to the people through democratic processes.

I went to public school in the mid-1960s just as the civil rights movement was just reaching a crescendo. Thus, I remember “brotherhood week” where we learned to understand others no matter their race, color, or creed. I remember making friends with an Italian classmate and ending up at his confirmation and he at my Bar Mitzvah. I made friends with an Afro-American peer who played classical, jazz and gospel music on a piano and who taught me more about our musical heritage than any appreciation class could every teach. However, now I fear that America in now headed in a completely opposite direction. Will there even be an Afro-American History Month or a Woman’s History Month in the schools? Will there be anti-bullying programs in the schools? I don’t know. Without a common culture that teaches the acceptance of diversity not only of people, but ideas, I fear for the future of this nation. There may not be choice for my 10 month grandchildren when they enter school when the only choices that exist will be mostly segregated or online schools teaching test prep or fundamentalist ideas. It has been America’s public education that has been the fabric that has held together this nation based on law, justice and respect. Without such a system, how can our national identity survive?

When I was an undergraduate at Queens College in the 1970s, I took a course in political philosophy. As part of the course, I had to write a term paper. The 1970s was a very turbulent time in America and so I decided that my paper would be about the right of protestors to engage in civil disobedience in their opposition to the Vietnam War. When I started to research civil disobedience, I started with two premises: One that the protestors and draft resistors were absolutely right in their justification to take over buildings, burn their draft cards and even attack police and two that I understood what civil disobedience really meant and when it was justified. When I was finished with my research under the guidance of a true educator, I ended up having more questions than answers.

This professor taught me that a truly educated person is one who is comfortable to walk in the shoes of those you disagree with. Only in this way can one garner a true understanding of what various concepts really mean. Doing this increases one depth of understanding and clarifies all the “isms” that people use—more as clichés than anything else. It also enables one to make connections and synthesize different ideas.

Originally, I planned to write about how we educators may need to use civil disobedience in order to try to stop those who want corporatize and privatize education through charters, vouchers, and de-professionalizing teaching. Then something happened in the last week that made me rethink everything that I planned to write about. The event was the Supreme Court ruling making gay marriage the law of the land. All of a sudden I started to hear the word civil disobedience coming from those opposed to the ruling. What I did not hear was the specific type of civil disobedience those on the right planned to engage in. Then it became clear to me why the myriad of GOP presidential candidates and fundamentalist religious preachers could not describe exactly how they planned to be civilly disobedient. It is because they do not have a clear understanding about when civil disobedience is justified or what exactly is civil disobedience. And obviously next I began to think about whether public educators have a justification to be civilly disobedient.

We in public education and those who oppose the Supreme Court ruling have something in common. We both believe that laws have come into existence, which are unjust. In addition, we both believe that we are absolutely right in our world view. Where we differ is in how we define the philosophical concept of justice. One side views justice as coming from some ephemeral being while the other side views justice as a concept that is a human construct.

Recently, I posted an article on Facebook which elicited an angry response from a friend. It was an article from a clergyman who had a different interpretation as to what the bible says about homosexuality. My Facebook friend believes that what a particular bible says is immutable because he/she knows that it was written by god and anything written by god can never be changed or interpreted in a different way. Here is someone who is unable to walk in someone else’s shoes to gain a deeper understanding of the those who see the world in a different way. Obviously, what the bible says has been reinterpreted many, many times. One just has to look at history and see about two thousand years of religious wars and conflicts over the nature of god and the truth in three different bibles. (By the way I am purposefully not capitalizing the words bible and god for reasons that will soon be obvious). The fact that there are three different bibles, canon law, talmudic law and sharia law as well as a myriad of commentaries on each is the evidence that our religious and spiritual understanding of god and our relationship to a possible supreme being has changed many times over the centuries. Even the Jewish bible or old testament to Christians and Moslems changed in its spiritual understanding of the nature of god and the universe. Biblical research reveals that different parts of the bible were written at different times by different men. For example, there are two stories of Adam and Eve in Genesis. In addition, the modern conception of heaven and hell does not exist in the first five books. Those ideas would come into Judaism and later Christianity from the Hellenistic world. Now I know what I am saying may offend some who read this. I bring this up to show that free and open inquiry through education and study made our understanding of how our Western religions developed and changed possible. I do not capitalize the word bible because there is more than one bible and I do not capitalize the word god because there is more than one conception of god. If there was only one interpretation of the bible there would not be hundreds of Christian denominations, different branches of Judaism, and the Sunni and Shiite conflict within the Moslem religion. Furthermore, there are several billion people who inhabit this earth who have a completely different spiritual understanding of the world. It is unfortunate that people who believe that their view is the absolute truth and who have used some type of power relationship to enforce their truth have a lot of blood on their hands. One needs to look no further than South Carolina to see what is wrought by any type of extremism—either religious or political.

Let us move away from religion and return to the concept justice. Historically speaking, the modern view of justice comes not from religion but from the Enlightenment. Originally, governments were thought of having received their authority to rule from a religious perspective. The Chinese thought Emperors received a mandate from heaven, a thousand years ago, European feudal monarchs believed they had to be anointed by god’s earthly representative (the Pope), and approximately five hundred years ago the absolute monarchs of Europe thought they ruled by “divine right.” Our modern concept of governmental justice derives from a social contract between people and the political institutions that they create. It is simply that governmental power derives from those who are governed. People established governments to keep order, protect us from danger, and give us a measure of “liberty” and “justice”. Ah, it is these last two concepts that have caused every political, social and economic conflict in the modern western world over the last several hundred years.

When I took political philosophy in college, I was greatly influenced by the writings of John Rawls. In 1971, he published “A Theory of Justice.” It was this book in that college course which gave me insight into what exactly is injustice and the role civil disobedience plays in trying to correct injustice in a given society. Rawls defines justice to mean that people within a given society should have equal liberty and equal opportunity. In addition, he states that liberty is a reciprocal relationship between people and groups. Basically, your liberty cannot harm someone else either socially, economically or politically. Rawls believed that injustice can only occur in a near-just society that is well ordered and has a constitutional government. He also understood that most near-just societies often are imperfect and that the concept of justice is ever changing and usually defined by those who have power in that society in order to keep or derive some economic, political or social benefit.

This definition clearly describes the history of our country. The founders knew they were creating an imperfect political system. Otherwise, our constitution would not have an elastic clause or a process to amend or change it. Also, it was created through compromise based on certain religious, social, economic and political concepts that existed at the end of the 18th century. However, most of our founding fathers had the general conception that justice meant that a government should not deprive a person of his/her life, liberty or property without some type of due process of law that all members of the state would agree with. Furthermore, Rawls also understood that a strong democratic process enable groups to exchange opinions and ideas without fear of intimidation. He felt that exchanging opinions checks the partiality of different groups and widens their perspectives. However, even after long and fruitful discussion—especially in a democratic republic—it sometimes does not yield a unanimous agreement. Therefore, we have to apply the basic principal of any democracy “majority rule” as Rawls called it, which means the majority wins. This principle is based on the presumption that it is less likely for a majority to be mistaken. On the other hand, sometimes the majority can be mistaken because of selfish economic interests, religious beliefs or certain life-experiences. It is for this reason that he believed that a “near just” society allows the minority to express their views. In our society, the way we have decided to do this is through education and the social contract imbedded in our constitution that allows for dissent through a free press, the right to petition the government for redress, and the right of legislative representatives to express their varying points of view.

So what exactly is civil disobedience and when is it justified. First, civil disobedience is political in nature. It is used when a political law is deemed to be unjust based on evidence that the law denies equal liberty and equal opportunity to a minority. It is a clear, serious and blatant violation of justice by denying a group economic, social or political participation in a democratic society. Next, normal constitutional routes must have been tried and have been subverted by those who hold power. Third, the level of disobedience must never reach a point where it threatens the rule of law within a society because those who engage in civil disobedience accept that most of the laws of the society are just. Fourth, the action must be controlled so as not to provoke those in power to unjust violence. Therefore, it must be peaceful. Fifth, the exercise should be rationally framed to advance a specific objective (change of a law). Sixth, it should be public and educational. Seventh, those who engage in civil disobedience must accept the legal consequences of their action in a peaceful manner. Therefore, when I began to apply this definition to those who were protesting the Vietnam War, I came to realize that many protesters were not really engaged in civil disobedience. Instead, they were engaging in what he termed conscientious refusal.

According to Rawls, what he calls conscientious refusal or objection is a simple refusal to obey what one considers an immoral law based on a personally held and immutable moral, social or political view. Therefore, conscientious refusal is not really appealing to a “shared” political conception of justice. It is not necessarily seeking to convince the majority or the authorities to change the law. It is often the attempt to force someone’s will through violence and power. For example, those who burned draft cards did not object to the draft law, but to end the war based on their own point of view—moral, economic or political–and chose to create disorder to force their belief system on the government. Often, the conscientious objector does not have a sense of justice because many objectors use violence to resist the law that is opposed, such as anti-abortion protesters that find abortion so wrong that they will manhandle pregnant women and kill doctors that perform abortion. And yes, it has been reported that several groups have threatened that one solution to preventing gay marriage is to inflict harm on those who acquire a legal marriage license.

Now, what has all this to do with public education? To me, the most important purpose of public education at the school and college level is to create a common civic view of what constitutes justice in our society through open and free discussion. Through education one develops a common civic culture through consensus. It is to develop the conception that there are general principles of civic justice and a constitutional mechanism to resolve our differences. It is to develop the understanding that we are a country based on law and not on threats and fear. It is for different people to get together and try to create a common civic conception of government and justice.

The real beginning of the voucher and charter movements was based on the idea of conscientious refusal. It began when America’s consensus of what represented justice fragmented. That fragmentation occurred when the Supreme Court in 1954 ruled separate but equal to be unconstitutional. There was a plurality that was unable to accept Afro-Americans having equal political, social and economic status in our society. Therefore, by creating separate charters, home schooling, or enacted vouchers to pay for religious schools, a separate and different type of curriculum could be taught. One could create a curriculum based on a biblical view of the world or one that would create limited opportunities for certain groups through the exclusion of disabled, noncompliant, or ELL students. One purpose of the many no-excuses charter school is to create compliant workers and citizens who will not question authority. By defunding public education, what remains is a shallow shell, teaching a limited curriculum in which there is no time to discuss different ideas. In addition, common civic institutions have little control as to what is taught in many charter and voucher schools. The Gates, Broads, Kochs and Waltons understand that when one controls education, one controls the story. They do not want students to be taught alternate viewpoints. They want students to accept their power and authority to control the government by saying that through their schools, they will give everyone the opportunity to join them in membership while at the same time really allowing very few into the club. The control of education is really about who will control American society.

Those who want to privatize education truly hate public school teachers because most of us are products of a liberal arts education. A liberal arts education teaches one to think, question and become a lifelong learner. Instead, the reformers wish to create a post-secondary educational system that is vocational and job related. They see no purpose to teach history, sociology, anthropology, psychology, philosophy or political science. I believe their purpose is to destroy the intellectual foundation of those who would question their right to control this nation socially, economically and politically. It is for this reason that they are trying to destroy unions—especially public employee unions by undermining their ability to collect dues. They want to make it impossible for people to organize collectively in order to create a political balance. It is interesting that they got the Supreme Court to rule that money represents speech for corporations in Citizens United while, at the same time, they want to destroy that same right for workers.

I fear the ultimate goal of those who want to privatize and corporatize this nation is to fragment our common civic culture. The privatizers want to use schools to divide us and not unite us. They want an educational system that will foster hate and mistrust among different groups. They want Afro-Americans to distrust middle class whites. They want different ethnic groups to be in conflict with each other. They want Latinos and Afro-Americans to fight each other over the few crumbs thrown to them. They surely want to foster and support schools that will try to circumvent the tolerance most Americans now feel toward LBGT people, not really because of any real religious or moral point of view, but to create enmity in order to hold onto power. After all, when one studies history, those who rule often disregard the moral codes they impose on others (the Borgias Popes, the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age, etc.). Our present billionaire oligarchy that controls so many politiicans want to destroy Rawls conception that justice means equal liberty and equal opportunity for everyone. When one turns people into human capital only having economic worth, it is dehumanizing and sets up one group against another.

On the other hand, people should be free to believe and teach their children whatever they want, but not on my dime. It is for this reason public school must remain democratically run so that a consensus can be reached as to what should be the curriculum within a given community. Yes, the politics of school boards can be messy, but that is what democracy is all about. Strong democracies force people to compromise and moderate their ideas through open discussion. In addition, strong democracies are able to deal with civil disobedience. In strong democracies, civil disobedience is a stabilizing force in a well ordered society. In this country, its use has been to offer protection to the least advantaged. Its use has been to expand justice in our society. However, charters, vouchers and other privatization schemes are really a form of conscientious refusal to accept an expanded view of justice. People should be wise to learn from our history that each time people in our nation chose to limit liberty, it led to violence, conflict and dysfunction within our political system Think about Prohibition, Jim Crow and McCarthyism.

Finally, should teachers engage in civil disobedience to save public education? The answer is obviously yes. Teachers feel that de-professionalization, punitive evaluation systems, denial of collective bargaining, and the closure of public schools based on circumstances where they have no control violates the consensus of what represents justice. These acts deny equal liberty and equal opportunity afforded to others in the society. The purpose of these laws is to deny teachers, parents and children equal liberty and equal opportunity to participate economically, socially and politically in our nation. Teachers as well as parents must engage in civil disobedience to motivate those in power to change certain laws. Its purpose will be to educate most Americans to understand that we now have injustice. Civil disobedience often works best when those in power do not have the means to prevent it from happening. Here would be some examples. Groups of retired teachers could follow around hedge fund billionaires that finance charters and give support to AstroTurf nonprofit organizations whose goal it is to weaken public education. We could do the same with Arne Duncan until he engages teachers in a constructive discussion. Retired teachers could trespass and video for YouTube the private schools where the corporate reformers send their children to contrast the type of education they want for their children as opposed to everyone else. Teachers within a collocated school could also take videos of the well-stocked charter classrooms as compared to the resources their public school classrooms have. Teachers can picket collocated charters before the start of school and after the day ends (charters usually have longer school days) to drive home the fact that a separate and unequal school system has been created. In mass, public school teachers can educate parents about the consequences (or lack thereof) of opting out of the test culture that has been created outside of the school day. The most extreme act of civil disobedience would obviously be to just refuse to give those invalid and unreliable common core assessments to prevent its use until those in power negotiate with all stakeholders—parents, teachers and students.

I think this country has to make a choice. Either we want to use education to create a common civic culture that expands justice for all Americans or we want to create an educational system that will fragment and create rifts that will eventually be unbridgeable. This happened in the past. One just has to study how schools in the United States developed during the anti-bellum period in the North and South. It lead to the development of two separate cultures that either could have gone their separate ways, but what often happens in history, a majority culture that is more powerful economically and politically forces their will on the weaker. We know the result and still live with its consequences. On the other hand, we can build a common national civic culture, using public education as a foundation, to create a shared sense of justice, but also respect for our individual differences and beliefs. There is a place for private and religious schools in our society, but their role should be to engage with the dominant political culture and not to impose their will on others.

I woke up this morning to notification beeps on my smart phone realizing for the first time that I was not a work on my birthday. When one is retired, one has the freedom not to have to stand and teach in a 90 degree room on a late June day. People were posting to my timeline on Facebook giving me birthday wishes. By the early afternoon, about 40 people wished me Happy Birthday. As I scrolled down the names of many of my friends, I soon realized that each person was important to me at different times of my life. Besides the usual family members, there were childhood friends and many teaching colleagues. Some were from the time I first became a teacher while others became friends with me later in my career when I was an Educational Evaluator on a child study team doing diagnostic testing of disabled students.

Then it hit me. I began to remember another birthday—one that took place in 1978. When I woke up that June morning, I was headed for an interview for my first real teaching job. Instead of Facebook notifications and email messages, there were birthday cards. Yes, I remember the time when people walked to the drug store, bought a card with thought, wrote a short message, signed their name, and mail it in time so that it would get to you either on or before your birthday. When I look at those old cards, these signatures still keep alive the memory of my parents, aunt, uncles, and friends no longer with us.

On that day I reached my 24th birthday. I was younger in age than both of my sons today. To tell the truth, I was still pretty naïve and in some ways not completely grown up at that time. I was living at home with my parents and my room still had somewhat of an adolescent quality to it. My bookcase was lined with many college books and science fiction novels. On another shelf were some of my board games, such as Scrabble and Monopoly. I still had a box on a table filled with old baseball cards (foolishly thrown out a week before I would get married three years later). There was my old twelve inch black and white TV with its rabbit ear antennas and seven live stations. There was my FM stereo radio, cassette, and turntable which endlessly played my little collection of vinyl records from the likes of Simon and Garfunkel, Beatles, Rolling Stones, Associations, etc.

I wore a brown suit that day with a polyester shirt and thick tie for that first real interview. A few weeks before, I finished my Master’s Degree in special education at Queens College. Interestingly, I did my teaching internship in a school that is presently up the block from where I live right now. I student taught in a class made up of emotionally handicapped neurologically impaired students. The class consisted of ten boys that were in third/fourth grade. To tell the truth, my supervising teacher probably was a little weak in terms of managing the students, but her heart was in the right place. In this white, middle class school (now primarily Asian), the special education class I was assigned did stand out. Not only were many of the students of color, but they were often loud while the rest of the school was quiet as a church. I recall one teacher who constantly complained about the noise our NIEH class made. Little did I realize that a quarter century later she would be my superintendent! The special education class I interned in did not really interact with the school because we entered the building through a side entrance and ate lunch at a separate time. These disabled students were not even allowed to participate in assembly or gym. This was a very different world.

I took the bus to Forest Hills that day to take the train to an ungentrified downtown Brooklyn. Besides a few old office buildings on Court and Livingston Streets, there were a few run-down stores and dilapidated brownstones on the side streets. This was my first visit to 110 Livingston Street. This building, today a luxury condominium, was thought to house what would be considered the paradigm of bureaucratic incompetence. I passed the Great Hall of the Board of Education to the elevators and made my way to the floor (I do not recall which one) that housed all the offices in charge of special education. At that time, special education was divided into different bureaus. There was the Bureau of the Physical Handicapped, the Bureau of Health Conservation, the Bureau of the Emotionally Handicapped and the Bureau of Students with Retarded Mental Development. I had to make my way to the Bureau of the Physically Handicapped. I recall having my heart in my mouth as I opened the door.

In the office sat two older men in shirt sleeves who were probably younger than I am today. One was standing and I told him who sent me to them. To my surprise, after they sat me down, they talked to me very informally which calmed my nerves. Besides the usual interview-type questions, what I most recall was pieces of the conversation that reminded me what a different world 1978 was from today. They both told me that I was being offered a very difficult job a minority school in South Jamaica. They told me the students would be difficult, I would not have a lot of resources and that I will probably make many mistakes. However, they told me not to worry because all young teachers make mistakes and often have difficulty reaching these children. They just hoped I had a little bit of a tough hide, but, at the same time, really felt something for these kids. One said that all teachers make goofs at the beginning, but really good teachers learn from their goofs. And great teachers learn from others. No one asked for a demonstration lesson or a portfolio of my lessons and student work. They gave me a job based on their own impressions of me and not data. They were looking for a good person who did have some skills; but I sense they were looking primarily for someone with a good heart. By the way, both these supervisors were educators who understood what I really had to face in what is today called a high need school.

Today, I probably would not have even gotten the job. After all, I would have to prove success even before I even started in the classroom. Expecting me to do the best I could is not good enough for the present reform crowd. I would have to say that I expect these high need students to achieve above grade level and reach proficiency on every common core assessment. I would have to bring a 200 page portfolio showing sample lessons and data showing student growth from my internship. My Master’s Degree would not impress them unless I passed all four state teaching examinations. On the other hand, if I came through Teach for America and attended an Ivy, I would not have to prove anything. Instead of encouragement, I would probably be told that if I failed with these students, my career would be short lived. Unlike today, in 1978, they still wanted teachers who would turn their love of children into a career and not into cogs measured by data points. That was the world I came into as a teacher and will always believe in. Children and teachers are people and not human capital. I retired because I measure the human and not the economic value of children and teachers.

It does not matter how many papers are written discrediting VAM. If it was possible to shove the American Statistical Association Statement on Using Value-Added Models for Educational Assessment in front of Andrew Cuomo’s face, it would make no difference to him. He would toss the paper into his circular file because reason has nothing to do with his so-called reform. VAM is not a rationale, but a belief to the reformers. The basis of their belief has nothing to do with mathematics, but everything to do with the tall tales the reformers give as anecdotal evidence to justify their beliefs.

This tall tale, often told by Teach for America types go something like this. After five weeks of training, this natural born teacher who just graduated from Harvard comes to work in a high needs school and immediately he is able to motivate every student in his 7th grade class located in the most poverty stricken area of Chicago. Each lesson captures the imagination of every student in the classroom. These highly inspirational lessons are differentiated toward every student in his class. He “teaches like a champion” as he was taught in those five magical weeks. He breaks down every academic behavior happening in the classroom. His students never knew that they have to face the teacher, give him direct eye contact, and have their feet planted squarely on floor. For the first time someone told them that they must have pencil in hand ready to write. Not only that, he is at school at 7:00 AM in the morning working with students one-on-one to catch them up to grade level. He tutors individual kids during his prep, during his lunch, and after school until nine at night. On weekends, he spends Saturday and Sunday at a local library working with even more of students. When April comes around, this class now has 100% of his students at level three or four on the Common Core ELA and Math Assessments. Just think, the previous year, when these students had that lazy burned-out unionized teacher who came to school at 8:40 and left exactly at 3:00, only 4% of these students even reached a level two on the assessment. Therefore, this “superman” teacher is rated using VAM as highly effective while that shriveled up union hack next door is deservedly ineffective and must be fired. Once every teacher in America is just like this Harvard wunderkind, every student will be on grade level headed toward college. There will no longer be any poverty in this great nation.

Disney could not have come up with a better fairy tale. All we need is for this teacher to sing a happy tune and a dozen Chicago pigeons will fly through his classroom window and tidy up his classroom. No mention is made of hunger, poor health, drug abuse, neglect, violence and homelessness that such students face every day. No mention is made of the lack of books, pencils, paper, or even desks and chairs found in such schools. No mention is made of broken lights, peeling paint and rodent droppings in these classrooms. No mention is made of about the lack of support and even terror initiated by many administrators of such schools toward new teachers. No mention is made that the only piece of technology these classrooms have is maybe a single outdated computer with intermittent internet access. No mentioned is made that even the most determined teacher will burn-out working 80 hours with no social or family life. No mention is made that this teacher’s meager salary cannot afford the price of a city studio apartment, food, transportation as well as teaching supplies for himself and his students. No mention is made that his salary will not be enough to survive and he must moonlight a second or even a third job to make ends meet while, at the same time, producing pages of lesson plans and taking additional college courses. Can VAM measure the stress and exhaustion of a working teacher trying to meet the demand that every child in his/her class grow academically against such odds?

But the main thing that VAM can never measure is what is within a good teacher’s heart. Only another anecdote can describe the heart of real teacher that no algorithm can compute. In the year 1965, I was ten-year-old fifth grader at PS 186 in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. I was not a great student. I struggled with reading because at that time the city used what was called the look-say approach to reading instruction using those old Scott Foresman basal reading series (commonly referred to as Dick and Jane). This approach was a precursor to what would someday be called whole language. I often had difficulty pronouncing words and therefore I was not a fluent reader. My parents were concerned and I remember sitting in the principal’s office with them. His name was Mr. Gladstone and he was the epitome of the old fashioned male principal. He was tall, wore a suit, and had distinguished looking gray hair, but had a kind face. He had me read for him and my parents. I do not recall exactly what was said, but as a result of the meeting, my class was changed. My new teacher was Miss Burke. She was this older Irish woman who always wore plaid skirts and high button blouses. To me, this teacher was Mary Poppins, Maria Von Tramp, and Cinderella’s fairy godmother combined into one living, breathing person who did change my life—not by magic but through caring, determination and love.

In her classroom, no one was allowed to make fun of any student who had a learning problem. She taught her students to help one another. When we read silently a book of our choosing, she always came over to me and had me read very quietly to her. I did not realize it at the time, but she was teaching me a host of strategies that helped me to become a fluent reader. I would not realize until I became a teacher myself that she was giving me phonetic and word analysis tools to improve my fluency. I recall that each time I read a page without error, she would have a big smile on her face and say “good job.”

During that era, each class was required to put on a play. She had each student read some lines of script and then said that I had the most expression and asked the class if I should have the main part. To my surprise, the whole class agreed with her. That was the first time in my school life that a teacher and my classmates showed confidence in me. However, I was scared to death and when I got home I cried to my parents that I could not do it. My mother called her at the school the next day and told her of my fears. I was afraid that I could not remember all the lines; I was afraid of making mistakes; and I was very much afraid of making a fool of myself in that giant auditorium in front of every student, parent and teacher. That evening, Miss Burke came to my house and spoke to my parents and me. She and my parents came up with a plan how I would learn my lines and practice a little bit every day. With her encouragement, I did it. I performed the main role of silly play about eating the right type of foods. I recall that I had to perform not only in the morning, but also again in the afternoon for another group of students. At that time, many of us went home for lunch, but I recall Miss Burke saying to my mom that I should have lunch with her (she was afraid I would not come back).

Whereas today, the common core teaches fifth grade students to compare the structures of drama, poetry and prose, we lived it. I learned how hard it is to put together a play with scenery, cuing for each stage direction and the details of choreographing a single dance. I learned how to stand, project my voice and even walk on a stage. Today, students learn that scripts have italicized stage directions, but I learned why and how each of those directions was important.

Miss Burke also ran the school’s chorus (glee club in 1960s jargon) with another teacher. I auditioned and soon found myself learning a medley of songs from Mary Poppins. We worked hours memorizing those songs, learning how to breathe and how to perform on cue using various hand signals. I remember that our chorus was chosen to perform in Lafayette High School. I was amazed that we were bathed in light while the audience was in total darkness. That was fine with me because it made me less nervous. To this day, I can still sing Supercalafragalisticexpialadoshus and Chim Chimney.

In addition, at that time, the Brooklyn Museum had an orchestra. This orchestra taught school children music appreciation. Every week, the fifth grade classes of our school went to the museum and the conductor and his orchestra taught us about all the different types of musical instruments and the role each instrument played in a concert. The week we were learning about woodwinds, I remember him calling me to the stage to try to blow through a tuba. No matter how hard I tried, I could not produce a single note. At the end of four weeks, all those instruments came together and played for us all different types of classical music. That was my first introduction to Beethoven and Mozart. I would learn the complexity of such music.

During the year, we went on a trip to the New York World’s Fair in which Miss Burke would explain all the different exhibits from many different cultures. Before we entered the Vatican exhibit, she explained to us the whole history behind the Pieta. For the first time, I was introduced to the Renaissance and Michelangelo. At the end of the year, because the fifth grade was the graduating class, we took a trip to Philadelphia to Independence Hall, the Franklin Museum and Betsy Ross’ House. What I remember most form that trip was sticking my head inside the Liberty Bell and sitting, in Independence Hall, at the desk of Thomas Jefferson. That motivated me to begin reading everything I could about our third president.

In terms of learning, I improved my writing because Miss Burke got each of us a penpal from Europe. I ended up writing to a young girl in Czechoslovakia. My letters got longer and more descriptive as the year progressed as I tried to tell her everything that we American children did throughout the day. She even had us write to an author of a book we read. I wrote to the author of a children’s biography of Eleanor Roosevelt. I was so proud when he wrote back to me and I have that letter to this very day. By the way, I still have that old play script in an attic box. A few months ago when we were cleaning out the attic, this sixty-year-old man refused to part with it.

That script is more than a bunch of faded rexograph papers. I cannot part with it because it represents the richest educational experience I ever had. It is amazing that all this was done in an average New York City public school by a teacher who taught with love and care. Miss Burke taught in a very traditional manner. To tell the truth, I cannot recall or even visualize a single lesson, but what I do recall is the warmth every time she spoke to either me or the class. I recall her smile and her pat on my back every time I did a good job. Can VAM measure any of this? Can VAM measure the love this teacher showed me and the other students of that class? Can it measure all the wonderful experiences this woman gave to me and my classmates that year? If you notice, I have not mentioned a single test. I do not recall taking any type of formal standardized test that year. Instead of hours of test prep, I had real learning, great learning. I learned through experiences, through song, through dance, through art and through purposeful writing. After that year, I no longer had any significant academic difficulties. What this teacher did for me is really how one is made college ready. A child is made college ready when you instill in them curiosity and a love of learning. Hours of high stakes testing and days of test prep create just the opposite—a hatred of learning. As I am writing this, my eyes are very moist. My tears represent the happy memories instilled by Miss Burke as well as tears of sadness for what has been lost—the true magic of teaching. Teaching is a human act, a complex act that cannot be measured by any algorithm. The passion and complexity of a human interaction cannot be measured by a single snapshot. When reformers describe teaching, it is nothing more than a mechanical act. One cannot measure something that comes from your heart and soul. One cannot measure an act of love, for that is what teaching really is.

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George Lakoff has retired as Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. He is now Director of the Center for the Neural Mind & Society (cnms.berkeley.edu).

"That all citizens will be given an equal start through a sound education is one of the most basic, promised rights of our democracy. Our chronic refusal as a nation to guarantee that right for all children.... is rooted in a kind of moral blindness, or at least a failure of moral imagination.... It is a failure which threatens our future as a nation of citizens called to a common purpose... tied to one another by a common bond." —Senator Paul Wellstone --- March 31, 2000